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If you have purchased products from us previously, you will have already received your login details (remember your username is not your email address. eg; If your email address is myname@site.com, your username will likely be just "myname"). If you just want to sign up to our forums, you can register here.

Social Media Mythbusting! How To Make Social Media Work For You

The early days of social media (between 2009 -2014), businesses posting to social media such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram used to be able to reach a large proportion of their followers.

By 2014, there was so much content being generated by brands & consumers alike, the social networks started filtering & limiting the amount of content seen by consumers.

Post amazing content, promote via paid social ads when you absolutely need people to see/act on it

Myth: More posts mean more people see your content

This one is dependent on the platform(s) you’re on. For the vast majority of businesses or individuals using Facebook, the algorithms limit who sees your content.

Reality and recommendations:

Twitter – yes – more posts generally means more interaction and more reach.

YouTube – if you optimise your videos with the right keywords, title, categories, captions etc, and the content is relevant, then you can build a large ongoing subscriber audience.

Instagram: Yes – post as often as 3 times a day and include Instagram stories here. BUT – know that the algorithm will only serve your most engaging content out of these

Facebook: STOP posting more than 1 x per 24 hour period. It’s better to only post your best performing content unicorns here. Or promote only your best posts with paid ad spend, as organic reach averages 1-2% of your followers

Myth: Boosting posts is a

good way to reach

more people

Reality:

When Facebook hit saturation point for content created by both brands and individuals (around 2014), the algorithm kicked in and slowed the Facebook content reaching the audience down to a trickle – currently 1-2%.

The big blue “Boost Post” button appeared at roughly the same time as the algorithm gatekeeper. However, boosting posts is counter productive to most brands & businesses – because all it does is keep people in Facebook – and feeds Facebook engagement metrics

Recommendation: Setup a Facebook Ad account and run ads properly based on your objectives, e.g. traffic to your site or awareness or video views.

Myth: Promotional

messages are ok

for social media

Reality:

Facebook and Instagram algorithms actually limit content produced by brands which look photoshopped with more than 20% of the image space taken up with text.

While YouTube and Twitter don’t stipulate content with promotional messaging, anything that looks too much like a traditional ad will likely to be skipped or ignored.

Recommendation:

Put your promotional copy into the caption rather than over the image.

Myth: Social Media

is not a customer

service channel

Reality:

In a 2016 survey run in the US by Sprout Social, consumers’ top choice for customer care was social media, followed by website / live chat. Using a phone was down at number 4 and visiting the store was last!

The other key stats:

36% of people have used social to shame a company for poor customer service, 30% of people will go to competitor if a brand doesn’t respond

Recommend:

Respond to every question, inbox, direct message, tweet, comment and bad review – a bad experience can be turned around into social customer advocacy.

https://sproutsocial.com/insights/data/q2-2016/

Myth:

Brands should

only publish once

A staggering 75% of people have purchased something because they saw it on social media. But how many times do they actually need to see content from a brand on the product before they make the purchase?

Reality:

Most people have to see a product or service 2-4 times on social before they purchase it. And nearly 20% of people need to see a social post or advertisement 5-8 times.

Recommendation:

Purchasing decisions driven by social take time. But don’t hammer the same post or ad over and over. Think about creating a story of a product or service and how you can bring different aspects of it to life over time

Image from @AlphaHskincare Instagram story

Myth:

Posting during

weekday business

hours is the best

Reality:

The vast majority of brands only post when there are people in the office – but the reality is that most consumers are active on social media out of office hours or at lunchtime

Recommendation:

Do an audit of your best performing content to see when the best times are to post in your preferred social channel.

For Instagram you can use a third party tool called Iconosquare to get recommendations on when your content hits the right sweet spot.

Myth:

Images are most

effective on social

Reality:

Video is like pizza – even when its bad its good

Social video generates 1200% more shares than text and images combined.

64% of consumers purchase after watching branded social videos

Recommendation:

Think about your use of video – Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are about views, engagement – and sharing

But a business is 53x more likely to appear on the first page of Google results if it uses video hosted on YouTube and embedded onto it on their website. The reason? The inclusion of video improves SEO, consequently boosting a business’ place in the rankings

Myth:

Every brand

needs Influencers

Reality:

The biggest platform for influencer marketing can be found on Instagram. Last year saw a whopping 12.9 million brand sponsored influencer posts (globally). And that number is estimated to double in 2018, creating an estimated market size of nearly $1.7 billion.

Most SMEs can’t afford the inflated fees currently being asked for by Instagram influencers with follower counts in the hundreds of thousands or millions.

Tiphereth Gloria is a social media and marketing guru. With more than 19 years in the digital space, and working with extremely high profile clients such as Optus, Pizza Hut, Revlon Australia, LG Australia, Microsoft Australia, Pepsi Australia, Samsung, and World Vision Australia, Tip specialises in social, digital, content and brand strategy, analytics, content creation and SEO.